Quite possibly the greatest Parental Bonus ever recorded.

In keeping with my ongoing occasional series Reasons Why Sesame Street is the Coolest Children’s Series on the Planet, or at Least Used to Be Before the Giggling Red Freakazoid Took Over, I present:

Phillip Glass. The Geometry of Circles. ‘Nuff said.

It’s time to play the music/It’s time to dress up right…

So this was going to be another major emo-fest about my life choices and how they’re intertwined with my family’s much to my ongoing irritation… but whaddaya know, the family actually turned out to understand.

More on that later. Right now, I feel like celebrating. Also, I’ve spent the last few days up to my eyeballs in more old Muppet Show clips… and, as it turns out, I have good company in . Why, it’s enough to make a girl feel positively Muppetational.

…It’s time to get things started. Time to meet (again) my personal Top Ten Very Special Guests ever on the… well, you know. *braaaaap* *crash!*

Heebeedee funnee happidee horbdee postee!

OK, if you got that, we’re good. If not, here’s a quick primer:

…I don’t know about you, but I feel much better.

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Seriously, the replenishment people came through like champs, the leggings are on their way, and all’s right with my little world once again. Of course, the warehouse people could still take issue with my polybags, but I have a backup plan. To wit: I care nothing for such petty matters as employment, for I have this day uncovered the GREATEST POP-CULTURE MASHUP EVER IN THE HISTORY OF STUFF.

Hint: Star Wars: Episode IV was filmed partly in England, yeah? And the Muppet Show was also filmed in England, right around the time the ST phenomenon was peaking…

Oh yes, my friends, they did. Luke, the droids, Chewbacca, and the Princess Leia… sort of. That’s where the Pigs in Space crossover comes in.

Why there hasn’t already been an Internet shrine erected to this half-hour of film, I have no idea. To think, all those poor souls out there scarred for life by the Holiday Special… perchance I can bring a new hope into their trembling lives. (‘New hope’, see what I did there? Just made that up now. Dang, I’m good.)

But do you really care/When you’re a marmoset?

I may have mentioned this before, but I have a deep and abiding fondness for the Sesame Street song about marmosets. Out of all the thousands of songs they played on the show, repeated over and over again, this is the one whose lyrics I learned by heart. Occasionally, to this day, i break out singing them in public. I cannot explain this; apparently, I was a weird kid. This is the view Shoemom endorses anyway.

Later, as all good little weird kids did pre-Nicktoons, I graduated to The Muppet Show. I frankly had no idea who most of the guest stars were, but the worldview of Henson & co — as definitely distinct from what’s happened to his creations since his death — I grasped instinctively and wholeheartedly. Just the other day, in fact, I taught Shoesis the proper way to cavort — and she turned out to be a model student. There may be hope for our relationship yet.

The Seven Days meme: Day Five

day 01 | a song
day 02 | a picture
day 03 | a book/ebook/fanfic
day 04 | a site
Day 05 | a youtube clip
day 06 | a quote
day 07 | whatever tickles your fancy

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Well, isn’t this convenient. The 2010 Olympic replica gear collection just happens to have been unveiled @ the Hudson’s Bay Co. today; naturally, along with the 2010 Olympic replica gear commercial. All I can add is… yeah, if nothing else, we were definitely made to have caribou on our clothing.

Some days you REALLY need to get to Sesame Street…

OK, so today has been totally Made of Fail for reasons that make me feel crumby just considering typing them, and after that last post I figure a little demonstration of my ongoing connexion with reality wouldn’t hurt anyway…in other words, it’s past time to bring on more glee. With extra spoonfuls of chocolate syrup and maybe some marshmallow fluff on top.

1) This one’s with rj_anderson in mind 🙂 Apologies for the sound, which I believe is a little off towards the end, but the imagery is amazingly gorgeous anyway:

2) That the gag is telegraphed a mile away doesn’t mean it’s not totally awesome.

3) “Ernie…what are you doing with those glasses of water?”: Probably the all-time E&B masterpiece.

4) Yep, it’s another of Kermit’s newsflashes gone hilariously wrong – now with bonus alien-invasion action!

More Bob & Ray-related glee!

So, ah, yeah, in the course of rummaging around for the clips in yesterday’s post…well, look at it this way: the more Bob & Ray clips, the less Bob & Ray observational verbiage, thus an exponential increase in glee all round, eh?

Besides which, this clip happens to be a source of Very Special Glee for yours truly, on account of I had no idea it even existed until it was released this month. Turns out that back in 1968 freelance producer David Jacobsen, thoroughly charmed by B&R’s unique way of making funny, spent an afternoon documenting it for posterity. (And no wonder; if the clip below is any indication, in person they came across as less an act than an oddball shared introversion. Rather like those twins that develop their own private language – the urge to crack the code must’ve been nearly irresistible.)

The result was dubbed – at their suggestion – Bob & Ray: An Award Winning Film. Unfortunately, never mind awards, it didn’t even find a distributor. So Jacobsen stuffed the footage in a closet…and has now pulled it out just in time for me to have backed up my allowance for, like, years on this iPod thing. Major loss of glee there.

Meanwhile, though, there’s this promo excerpt, which may be the only comedy footage in existence to be interesting more for what’s not there than what is:

Glee forever!

So there’s been some discussion re: the Take Back the Glee movement on LJ.

I am highly in favour of this whole idea, and not just because the icon attached to that post? Totally my phrase. Just saying. But no, I’ve actually been a firm believer in glee ever since I first encountered the concept in about grade five or so. If for no other reason than that it’s just such a fun word to bat around. To the point where saying it aloud several times running actually induces the state it describes. No, really, give it a try.

*pause*

Not bad, eh? I also recommend wandering around going ‘quack’ for awhile. Or ‘squeak’. Squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak…

[ahem] Right, yes, glee production. While I have no severe traumas to bounce back from – yet, anyway – participation in the movement does seem like a good way to get out from under the dark(ish) cloud of my last post. Clearly, the blogging gods demand sacrifice. Besides which, it fits in neatly with my new YouTube-posting habit.

(Yeah, I know, I know. Next week: I report in breathlessly on how I’ve learned to make my own mood icons!)

Anyhow, for now I present two clips that bring me much personal glee, in the hopes that they may spread some further:

1) Bob & Ray, ‘Champion Low Jumper’ – C’mon, you know I had to. It may help (sorry, guys) that this isn’t a video per se; it’s a recording from their Broadway show, of one of their most famous routines. The screwball logic is just…so…logical.

2) Sesame Street, ‘La La La Song’ – One of the simplest and sweetest of the original Bert & Ernie clips…incidentally, ‘linoleum’ is a really fun word to say, too.

It gets even better when you imagine the makers of ‘Dora the Explorer’ watching openmouthed.

Jack Black, eat your heart out. A full thirty years before there was a School of Rock, Sesame Street enrolled us all in the School of Funk. In honour of Motown’s 50th anniversary, here’s Stevie Wonder, rocking the beloved ol’block with Superstition. Yes, really.

(And for those of you wondering – according to the comments, the guitarist in the blue cap, who looks like a young Ray ‘Who ya gonna call’ Parker Jr., is a young Ray Parker Jr.)

“I never dreamed it’d be the dust mops!…They’ve always been our friends!”

It occurred to me quite suddenly today that my Sesame Street tribute post has maybe one itty-bitty flaw: that a decent chunk of my readership probably doesn’t know what the heck I’m talking about, beyond hazy guesses as to a sudden case of Tourettes’.

Mind you, clarifying may not help my cause much either…but it’s bound to be a whole lot funnier. So here’s the long-untold story of the day the Muppet Martians (Jim Henson and Jerry Hunt) made First Contact: